The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday. It was warm, slightly breezy, and just perfect. I had been keeping my eye on the forecast all week and had great expectations for yard work in the afternoon before we had to leave for our date. The night before, I had mentioned to Boyfriend that we should, preferably sooner rather than later, tear down "The Shack", as I called it. "The Shack" was what used to be a screened in deck off the back of the house that Boyfriend's grandpa built years ago. Eventually the screening ripped, so more screening was staple gunned on. Then some louvered windows were added. Then there most have been a point where the porch became too cold for them so his grandpa put up some huge sheets of what looks like the lovechild of cardboard and plywood. And then finally on top of that he applied 1-2 layers of plastic sheeting. If you've been paying attention, that's 5-6 layers. There was also a healthy amount of duct tape used around all the edges of the plastic sheeting, so let's just say there were about 6.5 layers of material that needed to be removed from the frame work. Most of the plastic sheeting was so old and weathered that it was just flaking off in tiny pieces, littering the floor with what looked like bad snow from a movie set.
Speaking of the floor, it had its own set of layers consisting of plastic sheeting that was attached the the framework in one huge piece, followed by more plastic sheeting that was laid on top, that was underneath some of those hard plastic mats you use to roll office chairs on top of, which was underneath 2 layers of various mismatched outdoor rugs. That's another 5 layers. So far we're up to 11.5 layers between the floor and the walls.
And then came the wood used for the framework. Oyyy. A good 50% of the screws had been stripped during the construction of the porch, making them next to impossible for Boyfriend to remove. And each post had, you guessed it, multiple layers of planks flanking it. Add to all this 4 ice chests, an electric radiator, a snow shovel, a broom, a large umbrella, a 7 tiered storage contraption, a 6 foot ladder, 3 buckets, and a table. All of this on an approximately 8x8 porch. I'm exhausted just typing it all out. Haha. I'm also really bad at giving too much detail when I tell a story :P
We finally made it outside around 1:00ish, so we had a good 2.5 hours or so before we needed to get ready to go. Boyfriend decided to attack the shack while I worked on another project. Last weekend , we did some much needed trimming of the apple trees in our backyard. I'm not sure how old they are but they definitely had not received much attention in years. They were completely overgrown and parts of the them had died.
Here in the Chicagoland area, Waste Management doesn't provide green bins for yard waste as I am accustomed to back home. Here in the Chicagoland area, you have to bundle all of your yard waste that is bundle-able. Bundle. As in like, a bundle of sticks, a la Three Little Pig style. In my head I wanted them to look like this:
but instead they looked something like this:
This is obviously not my backyard but it definitely resembles the six bundles of sticks I put together. While wearing shorts. Not the brightest idea but I was so excited to wear them after a seemingly endless winter here at the North Pole. I then dragged the bundles into the alley behind our house, which is where we put our trash, which is also so weird to me.
And while I bundled sticks, Boyfriend made the shack go from this:
to this:
Such a BIG difference! We're going to replace all the doors and windows that lead out to the deck. And we also need to repaint. And clean and stain the deck. And make sure all the posts are secure. And rent a dumpster so we can throw all the debris away. There's enough scrap here to make a whole new shack :P
So far, I'm really enjoying every aspect of my pseudo-homeownership! :)
